Hard Work
by hadaka
Summary: Apollo meets Sena and is forced to give hard work another chance. kirskipkat's Hard Work prompt.


**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

**Warning:** Complete and total **AU**.

**Summary:** Apollo meets Sena and is forced to give hard work another chance.

An answer to the Hard Work prompt from kirskipkat, from the es21_yaoi lj.

**A/N:** Weirdly, it's not that I dislike anyone on the Ojou team. I just have this intense desire to see them _crushed into the dirt_.

(Also, this...might not be exactly what Jack had in mind.)

* * *

By the time Shin Seijuro of the Ojou White Knights is sent face-first into the turf for the fifth time, it's 101 to 0 for NASA and there's only one minute and three seconds left on the clock.

Watching Shin pick himself slowly back up from the dirt is one of the most painful things Takami Ichiro has ever experienced.

No one speaks. The Knights on the field wearily take their places, exhausted and hopeless but determined to see it through to the very end. The Knights on the bench sit quietly and refuse to take their eyes off of what is taking place in front of them, this decimation of Ojou glory. The spectators sit and watch in utter silence, unable to even grumble or complain before the sheer magnitude of what is happening on the field.

Takami can see the faces of the other teams—Seibu, Shinryuuji, and Taiyo, Kyoshin, Bando, and Hakushu, all the different teams with all their different geniuses—and he sees the same thing in every single one.

"One minute remaining, NASA's ball!"

On the field, the lines form again—and NASA's 21 takes his position.

If NASA's 21 can feel the pressure of all those hundreds of eyes on him, he doesn't show it. The blue eyeshield glints white with the reflection from the stadium's spotlights, and his form, slim and small, as he positions himself adjacent to the line is totally relaxed and nonchalant, the casual grace of the consummate sportsman. He looks as fresh as if he'd just stepped onto the field for the first time during the match.

Takami would bet good money that NASA's 21 doesn't even come up to his shoulder.

There is no name on 21's jersey. Only two letters, in English, S and K. His teammates refer to him as "Eyeshield!" or "Eye, over here!" or, simply, "21." 21 himself hasn't spoken during the game, at least not in a tone audible to either the spectators or anyone in Ojou, and he has yet to remove his helmet for any reason, even during halftime.

In front of 21 stands NASA's 20, "Panther," and just the sight of Panther positioning himself for the next play as a running block for 21 is enough to make Takami want to throw up.

It's a play he's already seen more than ten times that night alone. He knows exactly what will happen, as does everyone else in that stadium. When he receives the ball, the NASA quarterback isn't even going to bother looking around. He'll catch, stop, step back, and execute a short pass to 21, who will take the football out of the air with one hand without having to look for it.

Then Panther and 21 will start to run.

There's no strategy to this. The NASA linemen will have already caught the brunt of the Ojou push. Shin will be charging toward the side Panther and 21 are running down, desperate to get there in time. Otawara will be trying to clear the way for him, Sakuraba will be rushing, but still—Otawara will be blocked, two NASA linemen taking him at once. Sakuraba will get past, but he will be too slow, will have no hope of catching either Panther or 21 at the right moment. And Shin—

Shin will get through, he will be in place, he will be in exactly the right place and the right time to be able to charge straight at the oncoming Panther and 21, his arm out for the tackle.

And it will all have been for nothing.

In the dull, strained silence of the stadium, Ojou tries anyway. They can do nothing else. Shin's eyes are blue flares as he slips past the line, past Otawara and Sakuraba, past the other players, straight through the crush and into Panther and 21's path. It's as if Takami can see every beat of Shin's heart as Ojou's 40, Japan's finest linebacker, goes for the charge, his eyes locked not on Panther directly in front of him but 21, running with the ball behind NASA's 20, and for just a second, Takami believes that maybe, this time—

Panther lunges.

A full-on tackle, all power and bulk and the impetus of a 4.1 for the 40 run, and Shin is helplessly, inevitably brought crashing to the turf, skidding nearly a meter through the green. Panther's arm is locked like a vise around Shin's arm, the same arm that had been out in preparation for the Trident Tackle, and now all Shin and Takami and every single other person in the stadium who is not an Alien can do is watch as NASA's 21 coolly steps over Panther's outstretched leg, lowers his head, and goes for the run.

A run like electricity. Like lightening. Like a meteor trailing fire in the sky, streaking across a field of green, blue and yellow, beyond all opposition, beyond all attempts to stop it. A run so fast that, even if an opposing player can see it coming, it will happen too quickly for him to react.

The C Run, American Football Monthly calls it. The fastest in the world.

Before today, Takami now gets, none of them had any idea what that really meant.

S. K., Eyeshield 21 of the NASA Aliens, who runs a recorded 4.0 for the 40 and is already, at fifteen, being scouted by the University of Notre Dame's Fighting Irish, scores his fifteenth touchdown just as the clock shows 0:47.

Takami doesn't even bother to pay attention when the Aliens go for their kick point.

The last thirty seconds of the match are almost worse than the first, devastating half of the game. In the first twelve minutes, it became clear that Ojou would lose. In the second twelve, it was realized that Ojou would not just lose—they would be _crushed_.

The fourth is just salt.

20 and 21, S. "Eyeshield 21" K. and Patrick "Panther" Spencer, an offensive strike pair the AFM recently dubbed "the Singularity," made up of an immovable fullback and an unstoppable running back.

When the clock ticks down to 0:00, Otawara collapses.

"This," he says, in a dazed, almost broken voice, "is this...is this natural American superiority?"

Everyone can hear him. There are tears in Sakuraba's eyes. On both field and bench, more than a few Knights are crying. Takami opens his mouth to say something, anything, and finds that he can't talk around the lump in his throat.

The American team doesn't seem to be paying attention. They are walking back toward their own bench, stretching, yawning, for all the world as if they had just finished practice. What hurts most of all is that their nonchalance is not faked—for the Aliens, this was obviously, crushingly routine.

Only one American player stops and turns back.

"Is that what this is?" Otawara looks desperately toward the side, toward the bench, where Coach was standing, his face like stone. _"Is that what this means? That there's nothing we can do?"_

The whole stadium is still. In the stands, Takami can see their faces, all those other Japanese _amefuto_ players who came to watch the Ojou vs. NASA game. All with the same question in their eyes, the same despair.

Next to Sakuraba, Shin's hands are clenched into fists.

Takami doesn't realize who is standing next to him until the crowd begins to murmur and point. He doesn't realize who it is that walks by him to where Otawara is kneeling until he sees Sakuraba's shocked expression, Shin's widened eyes.

Eyeshield 21 stands in front of Otawara, eyeshield glinting blue.

He is small. Impossibly small. Next to Otawara and Sakuraba, he is no bigger than a child, an elementary school student. Takami stares down at the top of Eyeshield's helmet and he can see the disbelief in the faces of his teammates, in the stands, because on the field with the football under his arm or in motion as he passes the twenty, NASA's 21 seems larger than anyone else on the green, and Takami realizes that he somehow had this idea that Eyeshield 21 was ten times bigger than he actually is despite the fact that he's been watching Eyeshield score touchdown after touchdown for the better part of an hour.

Otawara looks down at Eyeshield 21, because even kneeling he is taller than NASA's running back.

"Is that what this is?" he asks, dumbly, again, as if he can't think of anything else to say and so is repeating the last thing out of his mouth.

Takami is holding his breath.

Eyeshield 21 remains still for another minute, saying nothing—and then his hands move, up to his helmet. His fingers are bare, and he begins undoing the strap holding his helmet in place.

_Does he understand Japanese?_ it occurs to Takami, but only distantly, because he suddenly gets that the Unstoppable, half of NASA's Singularity, Eyeshield 21, the fastest recorded forty yards in the high school _amefuto_ world, is about to take off his eyeshield where everyone can see.

People are getting up in the stands, craning their necks for a look. Every single visiting _amefuto_ player is on his feet. At the American bench, a tall blonde man in a suit has turned toward the group standing on the turf, and Takami can feel those eyes from sixty yards away.

Eyeshield 21 lifts the helmet off of his head.

In the hush that fills the stadium, that grips the stands and the field alike, a hush totally and utterly different from the bleak silence of the game, in that space of wide eyes, open mouths, and an expression Takami has never before seen on Shin's face, Eyeshield 21 looks straight into Otawara's eyes.

"Otawara-senpai," says the small Japanese boy standing where NASA's 21 should be, "please excuse me for not introducing myself earlier. I'm Kobayakawa Sena."

He gives Otawara a polite bow.

Takami can't breathe.

When the boy raises his head again, his brown eyes glint yellow in the light.

"And there is no such thing," says Kobayakawa Sena, "as 'natural American superiority.'"


End file.
